ADM wrote:I've painted around 800 Figures in 4 years (plastic/resin/metal and plenty of vehicules, boat, planes), not just a few dozens, not to mention the 125 figures of the french foreign legion of the summer 2016

Okay, I admit I underestimated the numbers of handpainted figures by you.

ADM wrote:Cutting and cleaning figures isn't always the easiest part, it can be really difficult when the plastic is like rubber

Alright, I admit I overestimated the joy of cutting too

ADM wrote:I think you understand the long process of a great work accomplished with passion

Yes that is why I still keep writing replies to this topic.But what is difficult to understand for me and probably for others too is:Why do you cut and clean so many figures before you start painting the first unit? There must be some kind of philosophy in that. A desire by you to work as systematically as possible. Is that right?

Mr. Cryns, I think I wanted to get ride of the less pleasant part of the project before starting the more interesting work I also need a global view on everything before spending thousands hour works on it, like this I can detect if there's too much or too few of this or that.

The Hat sets is still that awful soft plastic like rubber, except the young Guard with hard plastic, it take one new blade of my yellow cutter to remove the mold line of a box of 50 figures from any manufacturer, except for Hat, it take 13 blades for 50 figures made of soft plastic... appart this problem the figures are nice.

There's plenty of extra flag bearer and trumpeters inside the boxes of the French line lancers (Waterloo 1815), so I converted them into lancers by adding new hands with swords from my spare box (Zvezda), boiling water to modify the position of the hand of the officer with saber, and I changed extra flags into new lances, I also used one extra lance from an old box of Esci/Italeri polish lancer. This quality of plastic is wonderful to work with, cutting, sanding, gluing, everything is perfect and the figures are superb ! I get the result I was expecting.

I was also pleased by the new Polish infantry of Strelets, greatly detailed, although the bases are quite small, but it will be fine when covered by sand or earth, the weight add more stability.

It's still the same Tamiya colors previously used for the primer.

Now everything is ready, I think I have collected enough for now, next step the painting is starting !

I recently mentioned on another thread that when it came to cleaning up soft Hat plastic figures, you were an expert. When I can't make progress with a sharp blade I use a heated metal pin to melt the mold lines. Good to hear your views on the Strelets Marching Poles. I have a box on the way.

The most relevant and accurate choice for the core of my 1812 french infantry is this Hat set (8095), mixed with one box of HAT 8166 French line Grenadiers, there's 408 figures, I'm now starting from zero the count of painted figures !

around a quarter of them (123 figures) have the trouser painted neutral grey (Vallejo 70992) or beige brown (Vallejo 70875) completed with black wash and drybrush, to add more diversity and realism.

I've added a black wash over everything (5% of black and 95% of water), including over the Tamiya primer and came back with a white drybrush (thick paint applied with a flat brush). This is where I'm now, working with this step.

It's french newspaper so you probably couldn't read them, anyway thank you so much everybody for your non stop support !

I'm starting underlining the details on the white, there's 2 methods, using a very thin brush with black paint (20 minutes of work for each figure and a lot of concentration)or with a 0,35 rotring (3 minutes of work for each figures, easy) and then covered with mat varnish to fix the result. after many different test I've found the best tool for this task, it's a pen Staedtler 0,3mm, it give me the quality I expect and more faster than any other methods so I will use it for all the figures of this project.the tip of the pen is sharpened even more thinner with a cutter to improve the result. You will notice that I'm already circling buttons before painting them.